


dear father (a son's lament)

by aimingarrows



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse treated appropriately and delicately, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Peter, Hurt Tony Stark, Peter Parker Whump, Please read or approach with caution I beg you, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony grovels, accidental child abuse, as he rightly should, but abuse nonetheless
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 10:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17343338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimingarrows/pseuds/aimingarrows
Summary: “You’re not his father! You have no right to ask for anything!” May yells. “Stay away from Peter!”**Or, Tony makes a terrible, terrible mistake.





	dear father (a son's lament)

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I love fluffy fics with Tony and Peter, we all know that no relationship is ever realistically perfect. I've always been fascinated by how Tony and Peter would navigate their newfound father/son relationship, and naturally this would come with bumps in the road. Tony works so hard to not be Howard, and of course I don't think he is like his father at all, but I thought what if one day, something slips? This fic came out. I've tried to be as sensitive and delicate as I can.
> 
> Remember - I, in NO WAY, deem this acceptable behaviour. In fact, I downright condemn it as being abhorrent. 
> 
> PLEASE proceed with caution. There is child abuse detailed in this chapter and overall fic.

There is a scar on the back of Tony’s left hipbone from when his father pushed him into the edge of a table, and the glass edge cut him deep. He doesn’t remember what they were arguing about, if they were even arguing at all, but he does remember the smell of his father’s breath, puffing Scotch-smelling air into his face. More so, he remembers the glassy look on Howard’s face, his brown eyes glazed over, shining and unseeing, and his expression – forehead creased, eyes blazing, lips curled into a sharp, sneering snarl. Tony’s young mind had thought him a wolf on the precipice of an attack.

It has been too long – the scar has already faded – but not long enough. Tony has a near perfect memory when it comes to the important things – and he remembers this well.

Well enough that he remembers the acute pain, the feeling of the blood cascading down his leg, rolling over his hands and fingers in deep ruby rivulets from where he pressed down on the wound. But the _fear,_ deep and blinding and wretched – that was always what hurt the most.

It starts here.

***

It has been 67 hours since Tony last slept, and he is counting time in bottles. It is December 19th, 2016, and he is so very, very tired.

It has been 25 years – a _quarter century_ – since his parents had been murdered, but the wound time had never healed was slashed open, raw and bleeding, and so painful that Tony could feel the throbbing of his own heart, its staccato pulse sending sore, stinging reverberations across his chest in nothing but a deep ache. Tony had felt a dark cloud hanging over his head for the better part of a few weeks, a gathering storm that only worsened as the days passed. His world had turned bleak, black. Angry. Violent. Like a lightning strike.

It shouldn’t have happened. He knew better. Hell, he had always wanted to _be_ better. Hadn’t he told Peter all those months ago that he wanted to break that cycle?

And yet he stares into the depths of the bottle, his heart bleeding, crying, _pouring_ with tears of regret, lost time, the renewed ache of a grief finally acknowledged, and the pain of a dear friend’s betrayal, and spirals down–

Down,

_Down._

**

In that moment, this was the problem – Tony Stark was a gathering storm. And like all of its kind, these storms do not care for its surroundings. They merely stir, brew, and then explode. When let loose, rain falling like teardrops from the sky, these storms are unmerciful, cruel and unforgiving. Their thunderclaps are like rumbling warnings, and their lightning strikes a vicious blow. They are unstoppable, and nothing can stand in their way. These storms cast aside any pre-existing structures in place, barreling on ahead unseeing, because in that moment of time nothing else matters but the rage.

**

Peter Parker is the sun.

But on a dark, cloudy day with black clouds, even a ray of sunlight cannot shine through.

The kid shouldn’t have been there.

**

Pepper, Rhodey and Happy know that when the anniversary of his parents’ death comes around, it is for everyone’s best interest to just stay away. Sure, they had vehemently and downright passionately tried to fight their way to help him over the years whenever he found himself in his special kind of parent-induced grieving period, but once they realized it only got him more riled up, angry and self-destructive, they elected wisely to leave him alone. They would let Tony come to them, and then and only then, would they start to press and coax all that emotional talk out of him.

But Peter didn’t know that. He had no experience with Tony in that kind of state. And Tony was too busy wallowing in his own grief to remember canceling their biweekly Saturday lab time after Peter’s morning patrol.

So Peter walks in, rambling happily and excitedly, telling Tony about his week and his morning patrol as he usually does. But unlike usual – Tony cannot stand it. It’s not the kid. God, no. It’s him. After hours – _days_ – of losing himself at the bottom of too many goddamn bottles, every sound is amplified and has taken on an echo-like quality. Every noise is like a sharp stab to his brain, throbbing violently against his skull. He can neither completely understand what is being said, everything is tinny and distorted, like he’s hearing a loud voice booming through a very long tunnel. He doesn’t understand, he’s grieving and sad and impatient and he just wants Peter to _shut up._

“Kid,” he starts, his voice scratchy from disuse and too much strong booze.

Either the kid doesn’t hear him, or is really eager to finish what he’s saying because Peter doesn’t stop talking.

“Peter–” he repeats, rubbing his face with his hands. He can feel his hackles rising at a rapid rate, his irritation levels spiking. He is stirring, brewing.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, a questioning tone in his voice. His back is to the kid, sitting at a worktable facing the back wall, but he can just imagine that Peter’s head is cocked to the side, eyes wide in curiosity but narrowed at the same time in that assessing gaze of his.

“Go home, kid,” Tony says bluntly.

“I-uh, what? Um,” the kid responds, sounding incredibly lost, and just a little bit hurt. God, Tony cannot deal with teenage emotions right now. “Sorry, I just thought-, it’s just cause it’s Saturday and you didn’t cancel so I just thought we were still on.”

“This is me canceling. Go home. Now. Please.” _For Christ’s sake, kid, just go._

“Oh, uh. I-uh.” Peter exhales loudly, like he doesn’t know what to say next. Tony shuts his eyes firmly at the nonstop talking and loud breathing and tries to calm himself.

“O-okay, Mr. Stark. Sorry, I-I didn’t know,” the kid says, his voice falling down to a near whisper at the end, sounding utterly rejected and crushed. Tony says nothing in response, the throbbing in his brain excruciating.

He hears Peter turn around, then the sound of clinking glass scraping against marble floor and a shocked curse. The noise is painfully sharp, and Tony grinds his teeth down, his patience wearing absolutely thin, worn down to the wire that he can feel himself on the verge of snapping.

Peter must have trodden on the remnants of a rocks glass that he threw against the wall god knows how many hours ago in a fit of anger mixed with despair at the memory of Rogers’ last ditch attempt to lie to him. _I didn’t know it was him._ Bullshit.

The kid must have only realized the state of the workshop now, because there is a too-quiet silence, then the scraping of the glass against floor again as Peter probably steps away. Then, a small “Mr Stark, are you alright?”

He doesn’t want to deal with this. He _cannot_ deal with this. It has been 67 hours and he is at the end of his rope. He grips his Scotch glass tighter, so firmly that his fingers begin to cramp under the strain. 

Peter’s footsteps ring in his ears, getting louder by the second as he steps closer. “Mr. Stark?”

“Kid,” Tony snaps, his voice sharp and his chest rumbling. “Get _out._ ”

“But Mr. Stark-”

And then Tony strikes.

“For _fuck’s_ sake Peter-!”

Later, he can even imagine how it must’ve looked like. Peter, his eyebrows furrowed and forehead creased, leaning forward slightly, bending down and arm reaching out to touch his shoulder. He is gentle and kind and concerned, like he always is.

But in that moment in time, when everything is so loud and distorted and Tony is pissed, angry, drunk, grieving and at the end of his fucking rope, it all happens so fast – he takes it out on the person who deserves the least pain in the world. Tony is so far gone in the depths of the bottle and his anger and grief, he doesn’t even realize what he’s done until it’s too late.

His glass firmly gripped in his right hand, Tony twists his body to face the kid and throws his left arm out in a wide arc in what was supposed to just be a big gesture. But instead he ends up striking Peter hard across the face, the kid flying backwards from the unexpected slap, toppling off balance, falling and hitting his head hard on the edge of a metal worktable before tumbling down onto the floor.

It’s like a slow motion sequence in a silent film, the seconds afterwards feel like years. The lab is silent, like the outside has ceased to exist other than what is happening – or rather, what _has_ happened – here and now in Tony’s lab. Then, Tony’s world propels like a rubber-band back into sharp focus.

He can hear sharp, quiet and quick little breaths and whimpers puffing out of Peter, an air of disbelief and shock lacing through them. But Tony finds he cannot speak. He cannot think. He cannot even breathe in fear of breaking any more of this kid.

What has he done? _What has he done?_

His brain is a mess, his hands are shaking and Peter is there lying on the ground looking so much like a scared puppy backed into a corner afraid that its owner is going to hurt them for disobeying a command.

_Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgodohGOD-_

He is frozen, his left arm still hanging suspended in the air. He brings it back in, cradling it shakily against his chest, as if afraid it’ll fly off and break something else on its own accord. Tony shrinks into his chair against himself.

Peter has picked himself up slightly, holding himself on his forearms as he continues to look at the ground. As if he cannot stand to turn and look at Tony. But eventually, he does.

The look in his eyes is one that Tony has seen reflected back to him in a mirror countless times when he was a little boy. Shock, fear, pain and so much _betrayal._ It is blinding, and Peter’s eyes pierce into him deeply. But then he sees it.

A deep gash on Peter’s face, from the outer corner of his left eyebrow running down to the bottom of his cheekbone, leaking bright crimson rivulets of blood down the young boy’s face, dripping onto and staining his hoodie and science T-shirt. It shocks Tony out of his stupor so severely he suffers from whiplash.

_He just hit Peter._

_Oh my god._

Tony doesn’t know how, but he finds it within himself to speak.

“Kid-” he starts, but isn’t able to finish as Peter scurries backwards from him, eyes wide in wild fear before picking himself up and running through the door out of the lab in one fell swoop.

And just like that – the kid is gone.

There is a puddle of blood where the kid fell, the stark red contrasting gruesomely with the white marble floor. There is a bloodstain on the edge of the metal worktable, and the blood on the floor is smeared like a perverse artwork from when Peter hastily left.

Tony is still holding his Scotch glass in his right hand, and when he realizes this is he lets go as if he just touched hot coal, the glass skittering across the edge of the table before also falling onto the floor and shattering into a million pieces. His hands are shaking, he’s hyperventilating.

Tony feels wretched, absolutely wrecked. He feels like the utter scum of the earth, the dirt at the bottom of the devil’s shoe. He is clawing at his chest, at his shirt, it’s too constricting, too much, he can’t _breathe._ He has hurt one of the people in the world he has vowed to protect, vowed to _die_ for, in one of the most sickeningly intimate, invasive and painful ways possible. When he blinks, he can see the kid’s bloody face behind his eyelids, staring up at him with wide, fearful eyes. It flashes briefly to an image of himself, younger than Peter, but staring up at his father in much the same way, a hand staunching the blood flowing from his hip.

He opens his eyes with a gasp, and sees Peter’s blood smeared on the floor in front of him, and feels the kid’s skin against the back of his left hand. He remembers Peter looking up at him, for once not in reverence, but in pure, unadulterated fear.

And the kid skittering away from him, tears pooling in his brown eyes as if afraid Tony would hit him again. 

Tony rushes to the nearest sink, and vomits 67 hours worth of alcohol down the drain.

**Author's Note:**

> If I decide to continue, the next chapter will likely be much, much longer as it will deal with the aftermath of this terrible event, how both Peter and Tony will deal with this on personal levels, what May will think of it, and how this impacts their relationship moving forward.


End file.
